In Thelemic literature, Babalon has three conceptual aspects: 1) the Gateway to the City of the Pyramids, 2) the Scarlet Woman, and 3) the Great Mother.
She serves as a portal for sorcerers, but probably not in the way one might expect. An occult reference explains:
Within the mystical system of Crowley, the adept reaches a final stage where he or she must cross the Abyss, that great wilderness of nothingness and dissolution. Choronzon is the dweller there, and his job is to trap the traveler in his meaningless world of illusion. However, Babalon is on just the other side, beckoning. If the adept gives himself to her—the symbol of this act is the pouring of the adept’s blood into her graal—he becomes impregnated in her, then to be reborn as a master and a saint that dwells in the City of the Pyramids.[iii]
In other words, the adept’s great hope is reincarnation as a master and saint in the City of the Pyramids. It sounds promising to obtain an honorary position in an exotic location like Egypt, but, in reality, it only amounts to the same old “oneism.” Rather than dwelling in a glamorous metropolis, the residents of the so-called city are disintegrated. According to Thelemapedia, “They have destroyed their earthly ego-identities, becoming nothing more than piles of dust (i.e. the remaining aspects of their True Selves without the self-sense of ‘I’).”
[iv] Monism offers no distinctions, no justice, no hope, and no love…nothing but dissolution and absorption into the meaningless whole. Occultism promises a beautiful city, but only delivers disintegration.
The second “scarlet woman” aspect of Babalon seemed to be not much more than an honorary title for Crowley’s female sex-magick partners, of whom seven were given the title.
[v] The third aspect “Great Mother” borrows from the book of Revelation’s “Mother of Harlots” imagery and is an important figure in Crowley’s depraved, blasphemous, and pantheistic “Gnostic Mass.”
Parsons and Hubbard’s motive was largely self-gratification, but the Working explicitly stated the goal of transforming traditional values. The rituals were aimed at incarnating the archetypal divine feminine and changing culture through her influence. It is a matter of record that feminism and pantheistic monism were sowed into public consciousness from the ivory towers of academia shortly subsequent to Parsons’ dark invocation:
The ultimate goal of these operations, carried out during February and March 1946, was to give birth to the magical being, or “moonchild,” described in Crowley’s works. Using the powerful energy of IX degree Sex Magick, the rites were intended to open a doorway through which the goddess Babalon herself might appear in human form.[vi]
Parsons believed that he and Hubbard accomplished this task in a series of rituals culminating in 1946. Parsons’ biography preserves a celebratory statement regarding her embodiment in the womb. In a fragment from his writings, Parsons, exhausted and exultant, declared his work a success. He believed that Babalon, in the manner of the Immaculate Conception, was due to be born to a woman somewhere on earth in nine months’ time. “Babalon is incarnate upon the earth today, awaiting the proper hour for her manifestation,” he wrote.
[vii]
